mental health

The Lost Ones

Not that long ago, someplace far away where American soldiers and sailors were deployed, there were two brothers. One was good at building bombs and the other was different. And the one that built the bombs used the one that was different to put those bombs in places and on things that killed people. The one that built the bombs did it because he believed he was fighting for one side in a war. And the other one did it because his brother told him to. He didn’t really understand why. He just knew what he was supposed to do.

First bombs…then play. First bombs…then eat.

One day they were both captured. First was the young man with the far off stare and the odd walk that fidgeted with his hands. He flapped his ears sometimes with his fingers. He giggled with delight when he saw people he liked and he couldn’t resist watching his favorite cartoon over and over again on the beat up television in his family’s home. He wasn’t hard to find. He wasn’t hiding. But he was confused and scared when they took him away. He didn’t understand. He just wanted his brother. And his TV.

The one who built the bombs was a little harder to find but he was captured a few hours later. Lives were saved in the community. It was a good thing that was done.

I’m not exactly sure that’s how it went down. Once, a long time ago there actually were two brothers planting roadside bombs in some far away place. And they were captured by my team. I’d forgotten about it for a long time. It was an unremarkable mission. Pretty easy, actually. I filed it away somewhere in the back of my head when I redeployed with a thousand other memories of far off places and semi-dramatic events. It wasn’t that memorable. Certainly not traumatic. It sat in a heap of things sort of like it.

One of the things that helped me calm myself in the weeks after I got back was to run. It’s a habit I’ve kept up. Long, slow runs through the southern California hills lubricate the synapsis. Endorphins remove the self conscious barriers of connection. I often find myself cycling through the long slideshow of my past. It’s a meditative experience many have. One day, a year or so after I’d taken off the uniform for good, on a particularly beautiful and challenging run a thought popped into my head from a distant corner of my conscience. It was about the two brothers and a random thing one of the locals had told one my collectors. I read it in a report.

“One of them isn’t right. Like a child.”

And then I remembered the picture of him. When you work a target deck like I did you spend a lot of time with whatever picture you have of whoever you’re hunting. They sort of burn into your brain. And I remember his even now as I write this. He looked a little off. Like he wasn’t all there. At the time, I found it unremarkable. We heard lots of things about lots of people when we did that work. Most of them weren’t true. But we knew with certainty that those two were trying to hurt people. So they had to be stopped. And we stopped them.

My life as a hunter in the desert and the one I have lived every day since crashed into each other as I climbed higher into the mountains, running harder and harder, my lungs burning, the music in my earbuds blaring. A thought that I wish I never had came to me. It was the memory of that picture and the look on that man’s face. And then I realized that it was the look my autistic and cognitively impaired son has in most pictures we’ve taken of him. My son who had been diagnosed on that deployment, after that mission. And then the hidden guilt of countless missions and operations, the times when in another environment the human part of my brain might have been more engaged, took over. I filled in the blanks with a guilty imagination. A story formed, and I could only see my son in that situation. I couldn’t shake it. And for a long time it’s something I thought about, even though I really didn’t want to. And it hurt.

First bombs…then play. He must have been so scared.

Veterans have lots of stories in different shapes and forms. Nearly all of them are not the blood and guts stories anyone makes into a movie. Mostly its boredom and weird things. Or things that just make you feel bad for no reason at all. And no one gets to hear them. Because they’re nearly impossible to share in the course of normal human interaction. You can’t. So you don’t. And the result is that vets are walking around in a world where people share their thoughts and minds in real time  and we may never again be in the same room with someone who knows what it smells like when someone vomits on the hot barrel of a .50 caliber machine gun and it starts to boil and bubble off it. Or what it feels like to hold an eight-year-old at gunpoint because he wandered into your camp looking for water. And it scared you.

They’re not remarkable stories. But we all have them. And we move around 21st century America with them in our heads and an unmet need to share a language no one but us can understand. We live, at least a little bit, apart from everyone else. No matter how close we try to get to them.

The common understanding is that veterans suffer invisible wounds because of what happened over there. And some are. But the harder truth is that the greater risk comes after. When the service member detaches and loses the thing that held everything together, the mission, the people, the shared life. The knowing that there are people that grew up in the same house as you with the same weird things. That loss is complete and sudden. And that alone is trauma enough to matter.

It’s not what the American people asked us to do that often gets us. It’s what happens to some of us when we stop. And when we lost our Tribe.

If you want to go deeper, find Sebastian Junger’s Tribe and read it. Then pass it to a vet.

Because this isn’t about pity or public guilt. It’s about helping someone find their way back. And until they do, they’re lost. And the ones who stay lost too long, stay lost forever.

Coming Back

In the ten years I spent on active duty, I spent a little less than two of them in an active war zone.  That may seem like a lot.

Or maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know, my frame of reference is broken.

I have friends who deployed eight or nine times in the last fifteen years.   I was never wounded.   I never lost any men.  Though I went into harms way often, nothing that harmful happened to me.  As far as I know, all of the men and women who served under me are still alive, except one. He died of cancer. The handful of times I didn’t think I was going to make it was because of the elements or the laws of physics or a bad decision that I made. I have no purple heart. No combat action ribbon. No “V” for valor on the bronze star I was awarded. I saw some dead bodies.  I know people who have been killed. But I’m whole. That’s my war story. No movie deal to follow.

About 2.5 million people have served in Operation Iraqi and Enduring Freedom.  Most of their experiences look like mine.  For every “Lone Survivor” there are dozens who had a different experience.  Those who served well but got out whole. Or at least we thought we did.  It doesn’t work that way though.

For many of us, more than any of us will tell you,  our return was a dark one.  We struggled to make sense of the world that was poorly designed for assimilation from war.  It was hard to concentrate. It was hard to care about things that didn’t seem to matter.

When we left the military, the jobs we took felt like a waste of time.  Our families, no longer a distant burden, were unmanageable.   We operated at a level of precision for too long in an environment where variance was handled with swift action or threat of violence.  Our children bore the brunt of our frustrations.  They didn’t and won’t ever understand why we were different.  Our environment regulated us for so long we lost the ability to regulate ourselves.

We acted out, self medicated, engaged in at risk behavior.

We created the crisis we craved.

And the worst part is we all knew people who had it much worse.  People who lost more.  People who lost everything.  People who had better reason to feel the way we did.  People who earned it more than we did.  And so we crawled into a dark despair made worse by shame.  Shame that we couldn’t handle it.  When others handled more.

The human mind struggles to sort out the types of stress we feel.   We don’t do a great job of categorizing the stress that comes from direct trauma and the stress that simply comes from long periods of vigilance.  I know this because a counselor told me.  A counselor I sought out after months of panic attacks, sleeplessness and a never ending feeling that something terrible was going to happen.  It wouldn’t go away.  It was always there.   It was exhausting and I almost didn’t make it out of it.  But I was lucky.  Lucky to have people in my life that helped.  I leaned on my friends and my faith.  My wife was as forgiving of my behavior towards her and my children as she was insistent that I get help.  And when I did, my journey to normal began.  It’s been four years since I returned.  And I’m still not completely whole.  But I’m close.  And close is as good as anyone can hope for, war or not.

It’s Veteran’s Day.  Today our world will be filled with messages of gratitude for those that served.  Those always feel good.  I will never get sick of hearing, thank you for your service.  But there’s something I needed more than thanks not too long ago.  I needed help. So my ask this Veteran’s Day is this.  Most of us know someone who served.  Instead of tagging them in a post on Facebook today, try this.  Give them a call. Send them a text.  Knock on their door.  Ask them how they’re doing, and be ready to listen.  Far too many of us are suffering in silence.  Far too many of us are too buried under our shame to talk about it.  No medals.  No war stories.  No heroism.  Just silent pain.  And sometimes, all it takes is for someone to ask that one question to turn us from the darkness to the light.   And if you’re like I was, in pain, get help.  It won’t go away on its own.  The cold lonely truth is that  you’ll never fully return until it does.  And we want you back.   All of you.